Export

Export downloads a copy of the content you authored — recipes, photos, settings, your catalog, and your store layout — packaged into one ZIP file you can re-import elsewhere.

The ZIP is a portable archive, not a disaster-recovery backup. It’s built for moving a kitchen to another install or editing your recipes offline. A full backup of a self-hosted install means backing up the database and storage volume directly — that’s the server operator’s job, not this download.

How to export

On your recipes list, click Export All Data (visible to kitchen members) and confirm the prompt. Your browser downloads a .zip file immediately.

What’s included

• All recipes — one .md file per recipe, in the recipe format
• Recipe photos — one image per photographed recipe, in an images/ folder
• QuickBites — all quick bite definitions
• Ingredient catalog — your custom ingredients, with nutrition data, aisle assignments, how often each one is checked, unit aliases, and the stores each one is placed at — including the aisle you set for it at each store
• Your edits to catalog ingredients — when you change a catalog ingredient in the nutrition editor (a custom aisle, store placements, or corrected nutrition), or set how often the Pantry checks it, that edit travels too. On import, each edit re-attaches to the matching catalog ingredient on the new install. If the destination’s catalog doesn’t have that ingredient, the edit is skipped and noted in the import summary — never guessed at
• Kitchen settings — your site title, homepage heading and subtitle, and the show-nutrition toggle
• Store list — the stores you’ve set up, in order
• Aisle and category ordering — your custom sort orders
• Archive manifest — a small file recording the export format version

What’s not included

• Meal-plan and cooking state — menu selections, grocery check-off, pantry, and cook history are not carried.
• User accounts and memberships — sign-in state and kitchen memberships stay where they are.
• Whether the kitchen is published, and its name — these are left out on purpose, so importing never publishes a kitchen or overwrites its name.
• API keys — these are environment variables set at the deployment level, not stored in the database. Configure them in your docker-compose.yml or .env on the new install.
• Derived data — IDs, timestamps, and recomputed nutrition are regenerated on import, so they’re not part of the file.

When you import, kitchen settings only fill in a destination kitchen that’s still using the defaults. If you’ve already customized a setting there, your value is kept — the import never overwrites it.

Using the export

The ZIP is re-importable on any Mirepoix installation. Use it for:

• Migration — move a kitchen to a new server or installation, settings and store layout included
• Editing offline — the .md files are plain text and can be edited in any text editor

Last updated July 15, 2026